Circular Volumes

This Instructional Activity is a part of the Lesson 13, Unit 5, Grade 8. The purpose of this activity is for students to connect their previous knowledge of the volume of rectangular prisms to their understanding of the volume of cylinders. From previous work, students should know that the volume of rectangular prisms is found by multiplying the area of the base by the height. Here we expand upon that to compute the volume of a cylinder. Students start by calculating the volume of a rectangular prism. Then they extrapolate from that to calculate the volume of a cylinder given the area of its base and its height.